Now a missing child advocate, Vallejo’s Midsi Sanchez defied all the odds and helped take down a monster

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Times-Herald file photoAfter learning that her kidnapper Curtis Dean Anderson has been convicted, Midsi Sanchez is all smiles as she leavesHighland Elementary School Wednesday afternoon, May 2, 2001, with Stephanie Kahalekulu, the great-aunt of slain Xiana Fairchild. Midsi's mother and father and the rest of her family rode in another car.

Times-Herald file photoMidsi Sanchez of Vallejo carries a candle with the likeness of Xiana Fairchild before a candlelight vigil on September 9, 2000, held to commemorate the nine-month anniversary of Xiana's disappearance.

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MIdsi Sanchez of Vallejo is finally able to talk about her experience of being kidnapped by Curtis Dean Anderson when she was 8. Now 20, with a daughter of her own, Sanchez has a daughter, is employed and is involved in a number of efforts to protect children from predators. (Mike Jory/Times-Herald)

Times-Herald file photoJuan Carlos Sanchez carries his daughter Midsi Sanchez from a police car after they returned home on Saturday evening, August 12, 2000. Midsi was abducted on Thursday afternoon and escaped from her abductor on Saturday morning.

A dozen years after escaping from a serial child rapist/killer, 20-year-old Midsi Sanchez of Vallejo says she’s finally coming to terms with her story and can relate it without crying.

Most of the time.

Aug. 12 was the 12th anniversary of her daring escape, and Midsi says she’s buoyed that her very presence offers hope to parents of missing children. She has helped the families of several missing girls in the last few years, such as Sandra Cantu and Sierra LaMar.

For years, Midsi said in an interview, she repressed the horror of her experience and spent much of her teen years self-medicating with alcohol and drugs, and having minor run-ins with the law. But then a car crash, a baby and another missing child “pumped my brakes,” and helped her begin moving in a more positive direction.

Post-escape turmoil

Smiling, poised and self-assured, Midsi described an often difficult dozen years following her abduction and escape some 40 hours later, on Aug. 12, 2000.

“I was so terrible to my parents,” she said. “I was a bad teenager, a bad daughter, a bad person.”

That description is difficult to reconcile with the friendly, open woman who shares with her mother, siblings, daughter and her mother’s boyfriend. And it’s a far cry from the deer-in-the-headlights image of the 8-year-old girl captured by photographers and news cameras after she was reunited with her family only hours after her bold escape.

In a series of chilling events that captured national attention, Midsi was chained in Curtis Dean Anderson’s 1984 Oldsmobile Firenza when he reportedly left her alone while he went into a former San Jose workplace. He had left his key ring behind and she grabbed it, unlocked her chains, climbed out a car window, and with Anderson in hot pursuit, jumped into a delivery truck. She yelled her name to the truck driver and that she’d been kidnapped. Anderson fled, but the driver radioed police with his license number and Anderson was captured a short time later.

Midsi says she has suppressed memories of Anderson’s trial and conviction — helped by her nervous testimony — and even has regrets that he died five years ago in prison, wishing she could confront him now about her abduction.

In recent years, Midsi has balked at interview requests. But recently she’s agreed to appear on 20/20 and I Survived. She’s also traveled to several U.S. cities with Mark Klaas of the KlaasKids Foundation to help launch a new smart phone app called Polly’s Guardian Angel, designed to help find missing children. (See related story.)

Klaas’ 12-year-old daughter, Polly, was kidnapped from her Petaluma home and murdered in 1991. He said “families, like that of (missing South Bay teenager) Sierra LaMar, take a lot from the fact that Midsi survived — that anything could happen.”

Too late for Xiana

That Midsi did survive is even more remarkable because she had been abducted by the same man who later confessed to abducting and killing Xiana Fairchild. In a case that dominated Bay Area news for months, Xiana was 7 when she vanished in December 1999 while waiting for her Vallejo school bus. Her skull was found about 14 months later in the Santa Cruz mountains. A former Vallejo taxi driver, Anderson, 39, pleaded guilty to Xiana’s kidnapping and murder in 2005, four years after he was convicted in Midsi’s kidnapping case. He died in prison two years later.

While Midsi expresses some regret that she will never be able to confront Anderson, one person who did, Xiana’s great-aunt Stephanie Kahalekulu, befriended Midsi shortly after her escape. Midsi also participated in post-escape search efforts for Xiana, not knowing that her fellow abductee was already dead.

Kahalekulu said Midsi’s strong character was evident even immediately after her escape.

“I’m glad (Midsi) had the ability to escape,” she said. “Xiana didn’t have that in her character.”

Despite her innate strength and intelligence that she needed to escape, Midsi’s experience made her different than she otherwise would have been, Klaas and Kahalekulu said.

Midsi agrees. As a mother herself, Midsi said she’s concerned about being over-protective, but that she and her daughter’s father are determined to arm the 2-year-old with as much information as possible to keep her safe. Midsi said she has no plans to allow her daughter to walk alone to school. She also asked that neither her daughter’s name nor photo be used in this article.

“I didn’t let her go to a baby-sitter until she could talk,” Midsi said. “I don’t like people looking at her or getting too close, and I’ll stare them down.”

Flashbacks

After escaping her abductor and reuniting with her family, Midsi returned to school, joined the wrestling team, played soccer and practiced boxing and karate. Though she didn’t graduate from high school, Midsi said she’s working on getting her high school equivalency certificate.

Counseling received after her escape helped Midsi find the strength to testify against her captor in court.

“I remember it in bits and pieces,” Midsi said. “I remember having to point (Anderson) out. I remember my aunt gave me a small angel figure to hold and I had a teddy bear that I kept with me. I was very scared. Nervous. I didn’t want to deal with it.”

Midsi acknowledges that at age 8 she may not have really dealt psychologically with what happened to her. Instead she withdrew from her family, got into fights and substance abuse. The behavior escalated in middle school, and she came close to “giving up,” entertaining thoughts that it might be better if she’d died, she said.

But, she said, until the last few years she’d never given Anderson much of a second thought, believing she was over the trauma.

She said she was surprised when nightmares began in 2009 after she learned she was pregnant while in the hospital following a late-night car crash in which she suffered back injuries.

“I felt safe after I got home (in August 2000), like no one was going to hurt me, again,” Midsi said. “(But) I started having nightmares about Anderson when I was pregnant. It all came back. I think about it all the time, now. I never did before. I dreamed he was trying to take my baby from me. I could see his face.”

“I regretted the (I Survived) show at first, because I told some things in it that I’d never told except in court,” she said. “I still haven’t told everything, but this was more than before. But, I have no regrets, now.

“People have been calling and (contacting me on social media) and they’re so supportive, and they thank me for sharing my story, and I feel like people look to me to confide in, so the regret slowly went away.”

Offering her support to families of missing children has become therapeutic, and a calling that began evolving in 2009, when 8-year-old Sandra Cantu of Tracy went missing, Midsi said.

When Cantu was later found dead, Midsi said she took it hard.

“When I meet with the families, it’s a sign of relief when they see me,” Midsi said. “My meeting with (missing Morgan Hill teenager) Sierra LaMar’s mom — she hugged me and thanked me for restoring her faith. That was big. I met a police officer there who told me his daughter went missing eight years after me, and they’re still looking.”

LaMar has been missing since March. Antolin Garcia-Torres, 21, was arrested in May in connection with her disappearance.

Too much too soon

Her experience gave her too much knowledge too soon, Midsi said.

“It made me aware of the bad that happens,” she said. “It opened my eyes to kidnapping, murder, drugs, tweakers, everything. None of that stuff was real before. It made me grow up really fast.”

Midsi credits the car crash — from which she still suffers back pain — her daughter’s birth, and the disappearance of Sandra Cantu with turning her life around.

“The crash physically stopped me from going out and hurting myself,” she said.

And while she’s made great strides in evening her life’s keel, Midsi said she’s not expecting to entirely get over her ordeal.

“I don’t think I’ll ever fully recover,” she said. “But I can think about it without crying and I can help other people.”

Mark Klaas and Midsi Sanchez have recently made personal appearances in several cities to launch a new smart phone app designed to help parents of missing children sound the alarm.

“Midsi went to Pensacola, Fla. with me for the launch of Polly’s Guardian Angel — a smart phone user-based app,” said Klaas, whose 12-year-old daughter Polly was kidnapped from her Petaluma home and murdered in 1991. Klaas said he was a car-rental franchise owner when this life-altering episode struck.

“It was a complete life-changer, it changed everything,” Klaas said. “Polly’s tragedy gave me a new focus and a different meaning to my life. It’s why I started my foundation, though I’d give it back in a heartbeat.”

Polly’s Guardian Angel app “is pre-populated with information that’s distributed to anyone who has the app in a five -mile radius of where the child went missing,” Klaas said. “There are also user prompts for what to do if the child has not been located in five minutes, or in 30 minutes — to make sure you’re doing all the right things. There is no doubt in my mind this will save lives at some point.”

Launched about six weeks ago, the app has hit some user glitches, which are expected to be ironed out within the month, Klaas said.

Polly’s Guardian Angel App officials say:

It’s the first parent-initiated missing child alert system.

The technology lets parents deploy GPS and social networking to sound the alarm and ask for help from nearby app users.

It also gives parents access to the Polly Call Center which connects parents to professionals who have been trained to make sure that everything possible is being done to re-connect the parent to their child.

Parents are offered step-by-step guidance derived from years of experience from searches around the United States.

Downloadable from iTunes or Android’s Play Store, Polly’s Guardian Angel purchases help fund the Florida-based Polly Call Center and future enhancements of the app.

Source: Polly’s Guardian Angel website

Two Vallejo girls share a nightmare

Dec. 9, 1999 — Xiana Fairchild vanishes from her Vallejo school bus stop, launching a protracted search including Kim Swartz, Amber’s mother, Xiana’s great aunt Stephanie Kahalekulu, and Marc Klaas of the KlaasKids Foundation, the father of a kidnapped and murdered child.

Aug. 10, 2000 — Midsi Sanchez, 8, is abducted on her way home from Highland Elementary School.

August 2001 — Vallejoans gather at Corbus Field for the one-year anniversary of Midsi’s abduction and escape. During the previous year, Midsi and/or her story were featured on several TV shows, including Inside Edition, 20/20, America’s Most Wanted, Montel Williams, Oprah and Dateline NBC.

July 2002 — After about a year-long trial, Judge Allan P. Carter sentences Anderson to 251 years in state prison. Anderson had pleaded innocent to all charges, but during several media interviews made statements implicating himself in the abduction of other young girls, including Xiana Fairchild. After his conviction, Anderson is confined to a 6-foot-wide, 9-foot-deep, 7.5-foot-tall cell at Marin County’s San Quentin State Prison.

November 2007 — Anderson admits to authorities that he kidnapped and killed Amber Swartz-Garcia in Arizona.

December 2007 — Anderson dies in a prison medical facility.

March, 2009 — Midsi helps pass out flyers and holds a Vallejo candlelight vigil during the search for 8-year-old Sandra Cantu of Tracy, who is later found dead in a suitcase submerged in an irrigation pond. A neighbor, Melissa Huckaby, 28, confesses to the murder.

May, 2009 — Midsi, now 16, is seriously hurt in a 2 a.m. car crash on Columbus Parkway in which she is a passenger. The 20-year-old driver is cited for DUI and released after being treated at a hospital for minor injuries.

July, 2009 — After an 18-month investigation, and unable to disprove Anderson’s confession that he killed Amber Swartz-Garcia, Pinole police officially call off their 21-year search for the girl despite never finding her remains. Kim Swartz and Stephanie Kahalekulu express doubts.

March 2012 — Midsi connects with the family of missing South Bay 15-year-old Sierra Mae Lamar.

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